


under the sea (i buried my past)

by closingdoors



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Since chibnall hasn't given me a scene like this then I guess I have to write it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 13:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16535714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: The Doctor and Graham discuss their wives.





	under the sea (i buried my past)

Under the sea, I buried my past.  
You can have my trauma song  
if you can find it.  
  
\- [125] it's six miles under the atlantic, motherfucker! Beat THAT!, asoftersea

* * *

 

Yaz and Ryan take their steps slowly. The ground, a manufactured reflective surface of the stars above them, makes it seem as though her companions really are walking through space. Ryan stares down at his feet as he does. 

The Doctor stands on the edge, where the grass meets invention, happily finishing the last of her cotton candy. Forty-fifth century and two galaxies away from Earth, she'd still managed to find a stall that sold it. For free - though, considering they'd just saved the planet from a hostile invasion, she's not entirely sure how much that counts as  _free._

Once she's finished eating, she turns to find the older of her new best friends, Graham. She spots him standing beneath a tree where the leaves are augmented to look like fireflies (the people on this planet are dead creative, she thinks, making a note to come back at a time when it isn't recovering from an invasion). There's a misty look in his eyes as he watches Ryan and Yaz laughing.

The Doctor joins him. Graham gives her a polite smile before he turns his attention back to Yaz and Ryan. 

"Graham, is it alright if I ask a personal question?"

"Blimey, doc, you don't normally ask permission."

She wrinkles her nose. "Ah. I guess you're right."

"Go on, then. Out with it."

Out among the fake-stars, Ryan almost looses his footing. Yaz catches him as he stumbles. Her long hair tumbles around her shoulders, catching the light of the stars, and The Doctor feels her hearts soften, thinking of another beautiful woman with brilliant hair. 

"Is it helping you? Travelling with me?"

The Doctor shifts her attention from Yaz and Ryan to Graham. He sighs, long and heavy, his shoulders sagging with it.

"How long d'you think we've been with you?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm rubbish with time, me." 

Graham meets her eyes. "No. I don't think that's true, you know."

She reaches up and plucks one of the fireflies from a low-hanging branch. It falls gently to the ground, its light dimming slowly as it does, and lands on the grass as an auburn-coloured leaf.

"Couple months, I'd say," she finally answers.

"Yeah," Graham nods, a faraway look in his eyes. "Yeah, me too."

The Doctor leans down and picks up the leaf. It's just an illusion, really. The leaves aren't actually fireflies. The ground Yaz and Ryan are walking on is just that, not stars. She thumbs the crisp texture of the leaf. They're beautiful illusions, though. Not meant to trick or deceive. Created to admire. That's something that she finds intriguing about the human race. There's death and destruction and war. Yet sometimes, in the corner of a galaxy, almost hidden, there's a small cluster of people creating beauty. 

She passes the leaf to Graham. He takes it, frowning.

"You know, I've been married."

"Really? You?"

"Oh yeah. I was good at it, too. Well, sometimes."

Graham eyes her doubtfully. "I reckon he must be mad to have married you."

"She," The Doctor corrects. "But yeah. She was. Absolutely brilliant, though. I don't think I told her that enough."

"Was?"

The Doctor stares at the leaf in Graham's hand. Graham follows her line of sight.

"You know, it's good that it still hurts. The best people leave a mark that doesn't ever really go away."

Graham closes his fingers around the leaf. They both look back out at Yaz and Ryan. They're both laying on their backs, waving their arms and legs as though they're making snow angels. That's another thing she admires about the human race - their capacity for happiness. They hurt, they endure, and they survive.

"Doc - if you don't mind me asking, what happened to your wife?"

The Doctor scratches the back of her neck, leaning against the tree trunk.

"You know, it all happened so long ago."

"Long ago? You must be barely thirty."

Her lips twitch into a smile.

"I'm over two thousand years old."

She watches as Graham's eyes bug wide.

"Bloody hell. Are you really?"

"Yeah. Unless I've lost track. I sometimes do," The Doctor admits with a shrug. "I was with my wife for almost a thousand years. On and off. She was a time traveller like me. It made it hard to pin down times to see her, unless she called. I couldn't resist when she did. She always had an adventure waiting for me."

"Blimey," Graham murmurs. He looks down at the ground. "It makes me and Grace sound so... ordinary."

"Hey, ordinary's good. Ordinary's brilliant. Keeps the world spinning."

It's not the kind of life she would be able to live, yet she still thinks about it sometimes, even though River has been gone for more time than she's willing to admit. She thinks about them having a mundane kind of life. Cups of tea and boring Sunday night telly and habitual kisses goodnight. It wouldn't have suited either of them, really. Too little shooting for River's taste and too linear for her own. 

Yet it would've been easier. Living a life like that. Contained and careful. Where shadows didn't eat people and her wife didn't sacrifice herself for people didn't know. A life like Darillium, twenty-four years of domestic bliss (with, okay, she'll admit, a little cheating with time travel) and no danger lurking around the corner. It's only now that River is really dead and gone and the echoes of her don't follow her around anymore that she realises how special ordinary really is.

"But if you ask me, Graham, your wife wasn't ordinary," she adds.

"I see her sometimes. She talks to me."

The admission seems to surprise Graham himself. The Doctor feels her hearts squeeze. Thinks about a time like that - when she had a been a bowtie-wearing idiot who'd been haunted by his wife's ghost. Always ignoring her shining light for fear of having to inevitably let go. River would talk to her then, too. Said things because she thought The Doctor couldn't hear.

"What does she say?"

"What, you don't think I'm mad?"

"No. I think you loved her."

"Yeah. Well, you know. She takes the mickey out of me most of the time. Tells me things she thinks I should know. Not that it matters, does it? I can't talk to her."

"Every moment with her matters, Graham."

Graham frowns at her.

"How long did you say you were with your wife?"

"Just over a thousand years." 

"Was it enough?"

The Doctor sighs. They'd been given more time than most. Stolen more moments than they should've. Yet, sometimes, she can't help but think of all the time they never had. She sees it sometimes, the swirl of possibility, taunting her, always slipping out of her grasp when she reaches for it. All of those regenerations River had given up - they might've saved her. Given her new faces, new personalities. More time. Together, if that's what she'd wanted. 

"No," The Doctor answers honestly. "But I don't think there really is such a thing as enough."

"No. Me neither." 

Out among the stars, Yaz and Ryan are still on their backs. Ryan points up towards the sky as a shooting star shines and dazzles before it fades away. The Doctor watches the delighted grin that settles on Yaz's lips. Her eyes are bright with it. 

"Does it help you, Doc? Travelling?"

The Doctor slips her hands into her coat pockets.

"Sometimes. The mysteries, the running, the adrenaline - they help. Sometimes it makes it worse. I go to places and I can't help but wish I'd been there with her. Then I wonder if she'd ever been there. You know what does help, though?"

"What's that?"

"The company," she answers simply. "People, friends... they're not just there to distract us. They're there to help us. To pick us up and dust us off when we fall. Even if we keep falling."

Graham smiles. His smile is kind. And warm. She feels one growing on her own face in return. 

"Thanks, Doc."

"Don't mention it."

Carefully, making sure not to break it, he slips the leaf into his coat pocket. The Doctor runs her fingers along one of the branches as he does. The fireflies sway in the wind but stay anchored to their home.

Graham takes a deep breath.

"So. Whole planet saved just in time for tea. Where now?"

The Doctor grins. "Where we always go. Onwards."


End file.
